"You Are Your Words" American Heritage Dictionary Web Launch Promo

To celebrate the launch of the 5th edition of The American Heritage Dictionary, Mechanica and Lollipop have created an interactive experience around the concept "You Are Your Words." The core of the concept is that the words you use are about more than just communicating – they tell the world who you are. And today, through emails, tweets, posts and other forms of communication, our words define us more deeply and broadly than ever.

The site brings this concept to life in a very dynamic and personal way, by engaging people to create a self-portrait in their own words. Visitors to YouAreYourWords.com can upload a photo or use their webcam to take a picture of themselves. They can then connect to Facebook or Twitter to pull in words from their social stream, or enter words that best define who they are. From there, Lollipop created a server-side application that composites a user’s words with their photo, creating a unique word-based self portrait.

One of the largest challenges on this project was to develop an engaging interactive experience that didn’t rely on Flash or HTML5 functionality. The site is built on a Ruby on Rails infrastructure and uses front-end technologies that do not require the use of plug-ins or advanced browsers.